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Staying With Mattie

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I invited Henry to go out with me and Marge, suggesting he ask Ellen who he dated a while back and who still asked about him, but Henry shook his head “no” and said “out things” were just too boring at our ages — and besides, since his…

Paradise Island

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A man comes out of the waves

Blank Checks

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Then he said something that really made sense, said he kept a blank check in his back pocket...

After getting sober through a bout of Bukowski

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.

A Lesson

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She’s the worst student in my Modern Film class and we’re alone at a bar.

What Noah Joad Was Thinking When They Left Him Behind

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Going to catch Ma a fish. Won't be special like Tom coming home. But she won't have to feed it. She can eat it.

Phoenix Complaining

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I seem to be at a crisis in this cursed writing life of mine[exclamation point] I am too depressed to squeeze another uncannily inspiring observation out of my pert[comma] sassy self[semi-colon] I waiver hysterically between feverish confidence and a pai

nudes

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for a handful of weeks/ my father took me to/ the college of art and design/ downtown/ where i took drawing lessons./

what are our motives

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Do you think that’s a good idea, you said. Sure, I said, as the men coiled up the anaconda and put it in a second truck that had arrived. You don’t think anyone will wonder what our motives are?

Feb 8

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Call it a spell or a prayer or a ritual; it worked.

Misplaced Emotions

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I spent most of those days in my car. Stashed in the trunk was a cache of precious stones, neatly sorted and separated, bound in smooth black velvet inside a smooth black briefcase.

Slut Whore

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Slut Whore has every Barbie on the market lined up sitting on the windowsill along her bedroom wall, and all their best clothes and accessories.

I’m tired of being timid.

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“Later,” I say to the frisky crickets, verbal cash of the eggnog spa, spot of gum…

Boats for Rent (Thinking About You)

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We're killing off the elephants. We're killing off the tigers. We're killing off monarch butterflies. We're wrecking the coral reefs. Big sad gorillas don't feel at home in their own homes. And all instead of learning to live in some…

Prosaic Miscellany

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Some days, you want all the red states to secede

After coming back from nowhere,

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you notice some of what you need― a pressure of something you've intended, somewhere without a place,

the girl who was my suicide

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last night a girl came to me in the shape of my suicide.

Bad Boys

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You the macho man shuffling one woman out the back entrance to let another one in the front.

Life After Death

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If opposites attract, that might explain it, Doreen and I. Conjugally blissed through thick and thin. Forty some odd years. Since June of sixty five.

What a Monster I Would Have Become Had I Gone Through Life Unimpeded

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the title of this poem

A Lovely Ghost Sings a Haunting Thing at Her Own Reflection

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We've come this far. That's all we know. We've watched others reach their abrupt ends. They've given us this exact moment and we've taken it from them, sometimes without thinking. It's time for the next communication. I know what concern is…

People Who Go to Poems for Truth

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People Who Go to Poems for Truth

Song of Unself

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nothing suffices as harbor / but a permit to claw at every yawing chasm

A Poet in a Coffeeshop in the Motherfucking Nineties

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Look at her. She doesn't want to be here. The kiss and “wouldn't miss it for the world” was as empty as her crossed arms, crossed legs, and jittery foot were loaded. She attacked the foam of her latte with a tiny red straw. I wanted to scream. Complain about the…

Ben Clarone: Prologue Part 1

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The gaunt broken man walked with short quick steps on the uneven path.

Slipstream

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Moments before they had been holding hands, but when they turned the corner and she told him she did not want to go down the dark path he had turned also, into someone she did not recognize and could not understand.

Marriage, California Style

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Out the window we could see the parking lot and, across the street, the Bijou Moonlight Laundromat.

The Way Back Home

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500 miles all the way from Omaha nine hours on the back of a flatbed truck

A Cameo (for no-one)

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I bleed my heart into my computer, peruse The fact they have proclaimed my root unfit for use But it is I! This manhood, this tower Extending up toward the heavens like a miraculous flower, Purple headed warrior of generation, See it standing…

Leftover Author's Notes

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#281: If you make it to the end on this one, I'll send you $1,000 in cash and a bag of apples. Your choices are Granny Smith and Fuji. I can also pay you in euros if that helps.